Not Enough
by nanniships
Summary: Joe tries to be a sport, but friends with benefits isn't working for him. M for lots of naughty talk.


Not Enough

Joe Molesley watched Phyllis Baxter sit on the edge of his bed to pull up her stockings and wondered why it was so arousing when she was simply in a hurry to leave.

"She's late for a date and she's tugging at them so hard she's about to put a runner in them," he mumbled to himself. "So why am I so turned on by this?"

He knew the answer of course; he simply felt he deserved a bit of self torture.

Everything she ever did attracted and aroused him. Always had done, even before they'd wound up in bed together after one night on rebounds from other people, listening to too many break-up songs, and decided that they both wanted to do it again sometime, preferably without the break-up songs.

Friends with benefits.

He hated it. Hated it almost as much as he loved having sex with Phyllis on a regular basis. Almost as much as he loved touching her until she made that low, keening sound. Almost as much as he loved what she enjoyed doing with her mouth.

He loved her so much that he hated it. And he knew he never be able to stop. It wasn't enough and never would be.

"Don't just stand there and sulk, Joe," she snapped as she thrashed the duvet around until her bra flew out. "Help me find my blouse, would you?"

"I'm not sulking," he protested weakly as he began looking around for her top.

"Gah! I'm so bloody late," she moaned. "It's a good thing Andy is a nice guy."

"Second date, is it?"

"Third," she replied. "I should have known better than to drop that flash drive off today. We _always_ wind up in the sack when its raining outside."

"Sorry to inconvenience you," he muttered, spying her blouse near his bedroom door, but making no move to fetch it.

"I'm not complaining! It might have even been my idea," she replied. "Ah...there it is. Right in front of your face, Joe. How'd you miss it?"

"I was a bit distracted because you haven't put your bra on yet."

"Off or on...makes no difference usually."

Joe watched her slide her arms through the straps of the bra and bit the inside of his cheek, as he'd done every time she prepared to leave his flat over the last eight months. This thing he hated was far too precious to risk losing it by asking her to stay.

"Now...where's my skirt..." Phyllis roamed through the room, eyes peeled for the skirt she vaguely remembered Joe slowly pulling it slowly off of her while she was panting in his ear to just leave it and shove it up. The quickie that wasn't.

"What are your plans tonight?" Joe asked, his bright tone trying to mask a rising gloom. Leaning against the wardrobe, he unobtrusively kicked the pencil skirt he'd so eagerly divested her of not twenty minutes before underneath it.

"My plans are to make you crawl under that wardrobe and fetch me my skirt," she said.

"Sorry," he muttered, getting down on his hands and knees to sweep his arm under the furniture.

"Tonight, I think Andy and I are going to eat and then do something annoyingly athletic. He's asked me several times for my shoe size, so I reckon we're either going skating or bowling." Phyllis grinned, reached over to grab the elastic at the back of his shorts, and snapped it against his bum.

"Hey now!"

"Serves you right for trying to stash my skirt away. What's with you?"

"Remember that time we went ice skating with Anna and John-"

"Oh God, yes! Anna was six months pregnant and just crept around on the ice-"

"And John claimed his knee was bollocks and refused to even go out but wouldn't stop hanging over the edge of the rink and bellowing at anyone who passed too close to Anna!"

Joe sat back on his heels with the skirt dangling from his fingers and watched Phyllis laugh at the memory. That had been when they were all just friends, acquaintances from work, and it had been safe to love her without risking his heart. Before the benefits came along.

Phyllis took the skirt from him and smiled. She reached out to smooth down his hair and felt her stomach flip over when he closed his eyes at her touch.

"You'll be late for Nice Guy Andy," he said horsely.

"He is a nice guy," she replied softly before sitting down on the floor next to him. "But you never answered my question. What's with you tonight?"

"I dunno," he muttered, picking up her hand absently to plant a kiss on her wrist. "You aren't in a hurry to leave?"

"I dunno," she echoed with a shrug and a smile. "Andy is a nice guy, but it's not like we have a lot of spark. I don't want to rush off when you're obviously bothered about something."

"Don't let me keep you," he said with a smile. "It wouldn't be fair to Nice Guy Andy. Him being such a nice guy and all."

"I'm going to thump you if you keep calling him that." She looked at him for a moment. "Do you have any plans tonight?"

"No."

"Really? I thought you had a standing date with that lovely girl in the next block of flats...Gwen, right?"

Joe's ears went a bit pink and he cleared his throat a few times.

"What is it?" she demanded. "Did she chuck you?"

"No!"

"Did you chuck her?"

"No!" Joe took a deep, agitated breath. "There was never anything to chuck." He glanced over at her incredulous eyebrow. "We were never dating."

"You told me that you'd met at the grocery and found out you were practically neighbors so you started seeing each other."

"I lied," Joe said simply.

"What? Why?!"

Joe tried to release Phyllis' hand and get up off of the floor, but she jerked him back down and glared at him.

"Look...you'd better be off," he stammered. "Nice Guy Andy doesn't deserve to be stood up...ow!"

He rubbed the side of his head where she'd thumped him and tried to scramble to his feet again.

"Talk to me, Joe!" she demanded. "Why would you lie for weeks about seeing someone?"

"Well, it gets a little embarrassing is all..."

"What does?"

"You've always got plans, places to go with dates and such. I was starting to feel like I was just flapping along in your wake." Joe looked away from Phyllis' blazing eyes to stare at the floor. "I didn't want to seem a wanker about it all."

"Then why not _go_ on dates, Joe? Why lie to me?"

"I'm rubbish at dating."

"Oh, I doubt that," she said firmly, shaking her head and wondering how the kindest, most loving man she'd ever known could have come to that conclusion.

"How would you know," he replied harshly. "We've never dated. We fuck two or three times a week and its bloody amazing, but we've never dated."

"I've been your friend for years, Joe. That should count for something."

The hurt in her voice made him cringe and stare harder at the floor. Phyllis stared at him a few moments, then got off the floor and stood by the bed, buttoning her blouse.

"Phyllis?" She just stared at the buttons, slowing working one through the fabric. "Phyllis...I'm sorry."

"Sorry for lying, or sorry for being a raging asshole?"

"Sorry for everything."

"Oh?" she said with a glare, thrusting the last button through. "I didn't notice any regrets thirty minutes ago."

"Phyllis-"

"Or last week when you popped over after work and we had a go at it on my kitchen table."

"I didn't mean-"

"Or...I think it was two months ago...when we stopped to get some wine for Beryl's dinner party and I wound up fellating you behind the Tesco-"

"You know what I regret? I bloody regret not having the balls to tell you how much that first night we spent together meant to me! That's what I regret!" Sitting on the floor and yelling made him suddenly feel daft and desperate. He stood up, adjusting his shorts, and stood with his arms crossed petulantly. Phyllis gazed at him in confusion for a moment, then snickered and cleared her throat. "Funny am I? Shag and a show?"

"You're hanging out of the fly, Joe. Put it back in and stop looking like you're going to stomp your little feeties and we'll talk."

"Talk about what?" he snapped as he frantically readjusted his shorts and looked for his trousers.

"Regrets...what else?"

"Nice Guy Andy is probably blowing up your phone about now."

"Let him."

Joe finally located his trousers and sat down on the bed to yank them on. Not bothering to do them up, he stared miserably at anything in the room other than Phyllis. With a deep sigh, she plopped down next to him.

"I've not seen anyone else since you and I started this...this...relationship thing," he said quietly.

"Why not, Joe?"

"At first, I thought it was because it wasn't worth the effort of trying to get out and meet someone, then go through all that awkward, initial feeling out each other stuff. After all, I was having sex fairly regularly with a beautiful woman who seemed to enjoy it with me and there were no expectations except just being in the moment. I told myself, what more could a bloke want?"

"But you felt like you ought to anyway? So you made up relationships with Gwen and, who was that other one? The one you said you met at a cricket match?"

"Agnes. I met her when I bumped into her Audi in the car park. We exchanged insurance information. Not exactly a date."

"Jesus, Joe. And the other one...with the posh name...Francesca or something. Did you stand behind her on line at the ATM?"

"No, I actually made her up entirely. She never existed."

Phyllis stared at Joe until she could no longer control the twitching of her mouth and began to snicker. Joe glared at her for a second, then sadness settled over his face again.

"But _why_ , Joe? Did you think you had to see other people to keep having sex with me?"

"I thought that was how you wanted it. You found people to date and have relationships with. So I figured that was how this friends with benefit thing worked. We just had friendly sex when we felt like it-nothing more."

"And that wasn't what you wanted?"

"No!" he exclaimed, turning to look at her almost frantically. "I wanted to wake up next to you that first time and tell you how much I cared about you and ask you on a proper date."

"Well then, why the hell didn't you?"

"Because I was scared that you wouldn't feel the same way, that I was just a rebound shag."

"Joe-"

"Plus, I had an erection that could have knocked down a Roman wall and that's kind of what we wound up focusing on. And when you suggested we could do this again, when we felt like a little rumpy bumpy would set us up for a rainy day, I...I thought that might be all I was going to get."

"You were never just a rebound shag to me, Joe."

"I wasn't?"

"No. I didn't exactly know what had happened between us that night. But it was never just about scratching an itch for me."

"Me neither."

Phyllis reached out to cup Joe's face and kissed him lightly. Then she stood up and commanded: "Wait here."

Joe watched in bemusement as she left her skirt on the bed next to him and strode from the room in her stockings and blouse. When she began speaking softly, he assumed she was on the phone-probably to Nice Guy Andy. He ran his hand along the top of her skirt and just barely restrained himself from falling over to bury his face in it and cry.

"Alright then...here's what we're going to do," she said briskly as she returned. "First of all, where's that hoody of yours that I like to wear?"

"Um...closet maybe?" he asked bemusedly. "Why?"

"I'm going to wear it," she replied, as if it should be obvious. When he just blinked at her, she rolled her eyes and smiled. "Go fetch it please."

Joe opened his mouth to ask another question, then shut it when she began unbuttoning her blouse. Shaking his head in confusion, he walked over to the closet, clutching his trousers to keep them from falling about his knees. He grabbed the oversized shirt and turned around to see that Phyllis had removed her bra and was working on her stockings. When she saw him standing and staring at her, she made an impatient gesture. He handed it to her.

"Ahhhhh…."she said with a long sigh as she kicked her stockings off and pulled the hoody over her head. "That's loads better."

"I don't disagree necessarily," he said after a moment, "but I'm really baffled right at this moment."

"I don't need to wear date clothes if I'm not going on a date," she informed him.

"You're not?"

"Obviously."

"What about poor old Nice Guy Andy?"

"He's a nice guy and he totally understood when I called him, apologized, and told him that me and the bloke I keep going on about needed to chat some things out."

"Is he a candidate for canonization?"

"Actually, I suspect he's interested in someone else and was trying to figure out a way to end things a week ago. He sounded relieved."

"Wanker."

"So...not a saint, but a nice guy anyway." Phyllis propped herself up on the pillows and patted the bed next to her. Joe began crawling up, only to get tangled in his trousers. "Oh just take them off, Joe."

Joe obliged and settled himself next to her. Phyllis laid her hand on his thigh and stroked lightly until he looked at her curiously, his breath speeding up.

"We need a new start here, Joe."

"Where do we start?"

"First, you ask me on a proper date before you slide you hand up under this hoody and tease at my nipples the way you know I like."

"How about dinner with me, Phyllis?" he asked with a broad grin before slipping his hand up under the hem of the shirt.

"I'd like that. Maybe tomorrow at seven? Pinch a bit harder." There was silence broken by low humming for a moment. "Now, why don't you tell me how you really feel about me before I start inching those shorts off of your hips?"

"I've loved you for years," he informed her, lifting his hips slightly to make her task easier. She paused and looked into his eyes.

"Really? you've really loved me for years?"

"Yeah. Are you going to finish taking them off?"

"I'll be taking everything off," she muttered before licking his collarbone.

"You don't mind? That I love you?"

"I'm mad for you, Joe, so... no. I don't mind. But I will mind if you don't get my knickers off in less than ten seconds…."

He made it in eight.

It turned out to be enough.


End file.
